Nintendo expect to sell 21 million Wii games and 100 million DS games before the end of the year.

Nintendo Co., the world's biggest maker of handheld video-game players, raised its full-year profit forecast by 20 percent on sales of its DS portable device and increased targets for Wii console software.

Net income will climb to 120 billion yen ($1 billion) for the year ending March 31, compared with an October estimate for 100 billion yen, the Kyoto-based company said in a preliminary statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange today. Nintendo reported 98.4 billion yen profit a year earlier.

Nintendo's two-year-old touch-screen DS player and titles such as Nintendogs, an interactive pet game, are helping the company fend off competition from Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable device. Nintendo is also making inroads in the home console market after it sold twice as many Wii players as Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan last year.

The company today raised its sales forecast for DS players this fiscal year by 15 percent to 23 million units and software by 22 percent to 100 million games. Sales of Wii games will reach 21 million games this year, compared with an earlier target of 17 million. The company left its target for Wii console sales unchanged at 6 million units.

Sales this year will probably rise to 900 billion yen, compared with 740 billion yen forecast in October and 509.2 billion yen a year earlier, the company said. Nintendo also raised it full-year dividend forecast to 480 yen, from the October estimate of 400 yen and 390 yen a year earlier.

Source: Bloomberg